Memory
by Aventine Hill
Summary: "To them she is levelheaded and always in control, especially of her own emotions. Because she only lets those show when they explode upon a tree in the form of arrows." When alone in the woods, Zoë copes with her past and what led her to be a Hunter.


A very, very random oneshot I started working on at the end of June and just ended up finishing a little over a week ago. And I'm still kinda sure it sucks. Either way. Greek translations came courtesy of Google Translate and, since they are Modern and not Ancient Greek, are not the most accurate, but the best I could find. Thanks to **Kaleidoscope Flowers** for betaing.

**Memory**

**By Aventine Hill**

* * *

Zoë releases the arrow and it soars through the air in a perfect line, dead straight, landing with a thump as it is driven through the heart of the hunted beast. The Hunters applaud her feat, congratulate her; she smiles as a form of thank you and departs the sight of the kill, as she knows the others are more than capable of handling the carcass on their own. Her help is not necessary. Heading along the path towards camp, she picks up the pace and refuses to allow herself to dawdle. That particular kill, the one she had just carried out, was one identical to so many others in her life. She was the lieutenant, and as such she had experience none of the rest of them did.

Once she is sure the others are out of sight, Zoë exhales, quite audibly, her shoulders visibly drooping before she quickly straightens them again and plows onwards towards her destination. She can feel her conscience telling her that this is unneeded and that her so-called method of getting rid of stress really does the opposite, because she doesn't need to bother worrying about those problems anymore, yet for some unknown reason, she still does. Among the hunters she never lets her façade of strength and leadership falter; only the woods ever see her worry, her guilt, her pain. For a while Zoë follows the beaten path, and then she strays off on her own. Signs of the lieutenant's previous ventures are evident on the nearby trees, which have become scarred and pitted from the being continuously marred by her arrows during the Hunters prolonged stay these past few weeks.

A bit farther in, she looks around and picks the next tree to be victimized by her emotions: an oak, identical to all the others around it. Zoë walks a few more steps, all the way up to the tree, and runs her hands over the rough bark, observing the texture. A rueful smile crosses her features, and she slowly turns away from the tree, setting a leisurely pace as she treks in the opposite direction. The only sound in the forest is the minor rattle of the arrows shifting in her quiver and the slight whisper created by the soles of her boots brushing against the hard-packed, leaf-strewn earth. Her centuries as a huntress have instilled in Zoë an always muffled, stealthy tread, nearly impossible to detect, except when, like now, the ground is littered with dead leaves shed by the above branches.

Through her walk the expression on her face remains the same: hardened and controlled. By the time she reaches her destination, a small clearing-miniscule, really, with barely enough space for a few people to stand-the tree in the distance is fifty feet away, most likely more. Zoë adjusts her quiver and loads her bow; her arm pulls back until the string is taut, and she lets the first arrow fly. More follow, and she pauses briefly between each, bow prematurely loaded, waiting for the initial projectile to hit its mark, but never completely halting. Each arrow released hits its target well within its boundaries, none veering off to the side even a fraction of an inch. Not a single one seems for even half a second to have a chance of missing, per usual.

Soon each individual arrow no longer has its own brief pause, rather they are a sequence, never halting, designed specifically to distract her from the rest of the world. This is the way it always works: She starts out cool, calm, collected. And then Zoë allows herself more freedom, and the arrows fly faster than before. Only here, in a secluded wood with her arrows and some trees as the only witnesses, would Zoë Nightshade allow her real emotions to show through. The anger always came first, consuming her, running all sense of order from her mind. Anger because no one had ever really understood her, among other, less clear reasons. Such as the fact that she's still doing this, no matter how many times she told herself she would stop. Or that as much as she loves the Hunters, she knows that if they saw her like this they'd most likely declare her clinically insane.

As a Hesperid she was always the youngest, always the outcast, looked down upon and never taken seriously by her sisters, thought of as a disgraceful mistake by her father. Her mother. . . Her mother had tried to comprehend her youngest daughter, but truly she was clueless. The whole ordeal simply enraged Zoë more, and caused her to bottle even more up inside.

For her those times are looked back upon as the darkest of her life. Day and night she was consumed by fury with no outlet to channel it into. In a fit of rebellion she had finally snapped and helped Hercules, against her better judgment, an act she paid dearly for. That particular memory brings a prominent red hue to her cheeks, and the lieutenant's attention is turned back to focusing completely on the quite purposeless task at hand. But it sucks her in, relentless, and _he_ invades her thoughts, allowing her to concentrate on nothing else but _him _and how much she _despises_ _him,_ and soon she's not thinking comprehensible thoughts anymore, and all she can think of is that conversation, when she had given him Anaklusmos. And then when he took all the credit and allowed them to simply kick her out and—

_Kátharma sas bástarde akátharto psémata kátharma giatí sto diáolo ékane nomízo__̱__ poté pó__̱__s tha boroúsa na eímai tóso anói__̱__tos Sas ákousa egó__̱__ sas pístepsan sas párei o gios tou Día cheirótera apó ó, ti o patéras sas aimati__̱__rí__̱__ exapatoún prodóti__̱__s Sas voí__̱__thi__̱__se_—

_You bastard you bastard you filthy lying bastard why the hell did I ever believe you how could I I'm so stupid I listened to you I believed you you goddamn son of Zeus worse than your father bloody deceiving traitor I helped you—_

Somehow she comes up with the willpower and yanks herself out of those thoughts, because if there's one thing that's bad for her mental health it's thinking about him and how he left her to take the blame, and didn't even look back to see what had befallen her once he ruined her existence. And Zoë is more than sure that thinking of him will eventually consume her like it did 2,000 years ago, when she was sure that she loved him and would do anything for him. If she gets caught up in that a second time around, there's a good chance that he_ will _make her go insane.

_- Ego__̱__kentrikós kátharma poté den skéftetai kaneís ton eaf__̱__tó tou, allá giatí akoúo__̱__ ton lógo ékana ton voi__̱__thí__̱__so__̱__ egó__̱__, den tha prépei na échei o pséf__̱__ti__̱__s ti__̱__n kataraméni__̱__ psémata kátharma-_

_-Self-centered son of a bitch never thinks of anyone but himself why did I listen to him _why _did I help him I shouldn't have the _liar _that goddamn lying bastard—_

_Stop it!_ her rational side commands, and somehow it's successful this time around. _He's done with, over, and you never have to deal with him again. _And for some reason she finds solace in those words, puts down her bow momentarily, and sets about erasing all traces of the tears from her face with vigor, tears she had no idea were even falling, but now wants nothing more than to get rid of. For a few seconds she stares at them, now wiped onto the sleeve of her jacket, as if they are foreign objects never before heard of. Then Zoë unfreezes, rubbing at her eyes hastily to make sure she has hidden all traces of the very existence of those tears, and she quickly looks around to make sure there are no people around to witness this, even though she knows that if there were, she would have noticed. As much as she likes to deny it fervently, to others and primarily to herself, she's still hurting over him, and that's why her trust is no longer something easily given. It's because of him that she's changed who she is. And more than anything, the hunter is ashamed that he is still hurting her millennia later, embarrassing her. Finally pushing that out of her mind and wiping away the last few remaining tears, she picks herself up from the ground and grabs her bow once again, leveling it out and firing off the first of another hoard of arrows.

Nevertheless, the Hunter still ends up playing her own story over in her head, and as always she reaches the emotion best associated with the following part of her life: regret. At this point, she fires one last arrow, just one, not entire fleets like before, and abruptly stops. As Zoë ventures towards the tree this time her footsteps are rushed and hurried, yet never breaking from a walk to a jog, much less a run. Her stride is, this time, rapid and quick, and so it's not long until the oak is right in front of her again, and she begins wriggling the arrows out of the surface of the oak. One by one she removes each silver arrow, gathering them in her left hand, collecting them from where they are embedded in the bark with her right. There is a dangerous glint quite prominent in her eyes, although Zoë struggles very hard to control it and nearly succeeds. Again, she surveys the general area and picks another tree, not far from the first. There is nothing ceremonial this time, nothing restraining her from simply venting about everything that befell her so long ago, the cruelty of it all, the unfairness of it all, and underneath that, the guilt that she brought it upon herself and still can't let it go. And so now she doesn't bother to closely examine the bark she is about to spear with the tips of so many arrows.

Now there is a rhythm to her actions: grab, load, aim, shoot, a four second process that she easily continues with barely any concentration necessary. As was the pace of her life, during that time after she stopped being a Hesperid and before she was lucky enough to join the Hunters: automated, her thoughts always somewhere else, usually lingering in the past. Getting by those few years when she was basically a mortal had been one of the greatest challenges she had ever faced. There were many nights when Zoë would simply cry for hours, mourning the loss of her old life, because as horrible as it may have been, this had to be worse. Back then she had regretted it all, and hated herself for never fully appreciating what she had, never bothering to contain her anger at her father. The reason why he simply allowed himself to despise his youngest daughter so easily most likely had a lot to do with the frequency of her thoughtless angry outbursts, a majority of which were directed at him. All because she wouldn't be the quiet obedient daughter who would sit in the corner silently and do only what she was told, and instead downright refused to conform to his wishes without force. Their fractured relationship was both of their faults, but she had still regretted not trying to work on it. Most of all, though, Zoë regretted the actions she had taken in what she thought of as a fit of temporary insanity. That she had thrown her whole life, her past, her everything, away for _him_, although she refuses to allow herself to break down over that again, because he isn't worth it.

_He isn't worth it, he isn't worth it, _she repeats the mantra over and over in her head, hoping to convince herself that she'll never have to think about him again. _He isn't worth it, he isn't worth it…_

But as much as she still despises _him _for betraying her, now it is obvious that Atlas was, and is, simply put, an inattentive miserable excuse for a father, and that her sisters cared more about gaining his approval than they ever did about her. Sometimes she thinks she almost owes Hercules a favor for getting her away from them, although at the time she was sure of just the opposite, and she still hates him too much for that. Betrayal is not something she takes lightly. The thought of all of them still makes her blood boil, yet somehow the lieutenant manages to keep herself under control.

Because as horrible as her father had been, and as miserable as those years as a mortal had been, that was all over and done with. It was the past, something that everyone else seemed to have forgotten about entirely, so why did she have so many problems leaving it buried? Why did her mind have an obsession with dwelling on all the mistakes she had made? While she was in the woods Zoë almost never thought about when she had made the best choice of her life and had finally stopped screwing up. When she had met Artemis and made the decision to join the Hunters. It seemed that, when in the woods, she was too focused on beating herself up to think about the good times.

In the beginning she knew nothing, or next to nothing, about hunting in general, but under the careful guidance of the others she became a valued member of the Hunt. When Zoë was among those who eventually became her new family, her new sisters, she finally had a place to belong. With them the years seemed to pass in the span of days, and it wasn't long before Artemis offered her the greatest honor she could imagine: the title of lieutenant. And even through all that she had maintained the inability to forget about her past. Not that Zoë ever told anyone that, of course. She continues releasing arrows, albeit now at a decreased pace. Even thinking of the happy times right now is no help in distracting her mind from its fury.

But as always her venting comes to an end, quite suddenly and abruptly, only a few minutes and just nineteen arrows later, all of her anger suddenly fizzling out. She finds the nearest tree, one she scarred during this same ritual a few weeks back, and leans against it, her ragged breathing slowly decreasing in volume and evening out. Sometimes-a majority of the time, actually-Zoë thinks that this, her method of dealing with emotions about her life two thousand years ago, is a signal that she really has gone off the deep end. After all, who would bother worrying about things so far gone? _Zoë Nightshade bothers_, a voice in her head whispers, but she ignores it for the most part, letting its words pass by as background noise.

To the lieutenant it seems that she'll never completely get over what happened, a thought that has kept her awake on more than one occasion. _Talk about it_, yet another of the many not-so-helpful voices in her head had once said, a proposition she had almost immediately eliminated from her list of possible courses of action. Who would she possibly talk to? Not the Hunters; all of them looked up to her as their fearless leader who could tackle any issue (save using English in a manner common to the current millennium). To them she is levelheaded and always in control of everything, especially her own emotions. Because she only allows those to show when they boil over and explode upon a poor unsuspecting tree in the form of a volley of arrows. It may not be the most conventional method, but it works.

Only a few minutes later does Zoë bother to look up and to check the sky, and she notices how much time has passed. Staying in the woods any longer ensures that her presence will be missed and her actions discovered, and so she begins the process of returning to the Hunters' camp by putting her full weight on her feet again instead of the oak. Prying herself from the bark of the tree, a feat much harder than it may seem, Zoë starts her walk to camp. As she reaches the area where her path meets its better used counterpart, her mind automatically starts once more locking away each memory until the next time. Because as much as she tries to convince herself of the opposite and break this habit, there will be a next time. There always is.

_Fin_

* * *

I honestly don't know where this sprouted from at all. Either way, reviewing wouldn't kill you, would it? So you should do it. *nods*

-Ave


End file.
